4 Reasons to Let the Pros Repair Your Mobile Home Plumbing

If you need to install, upgrade, or repair plumbing in your mobile home, you may be considering a DIY solution to solve your issues. Listed below are four excellent reasons why you should hire an experienced mobile home plumber instead.

Permits Are Not Optional

In many states, your mobile home plumbing repairs are governed by strict codes. These rules stipulate the way repairs must be made and describe the types of materials allowed when making repairs or upgrades to plumbing systems. Mobile home repair codes also define who is permitted to make plumbing repairs to any kind of manufactured housing.

In Nevada, the Manufactured Housing Division (MHD) is the agency that enforces the mobile home codes. Plumbing repairs and upgrades made to a mobile home require a permit from the MHD.

Plumbing work that requires a permit includes:

Water supply system work

Water heater installation or replacement

Drainage and waste system work

Vent system installation and repair

Additional requirements apply when you plan on having a hydronic heating and cooling system installed, especially if it will be connected to your 20 home water source. You will need to have MHD-approved plans onsite to have this type of installation performed in your mobile home.

More Rules Must Be Followed

Remember that each repair you make includes a separate permit fee, presently set at $90 plus the time to pull the permit. This fee pays for one hour of inspection time by an MHD official. You will be charged additional fees for every 30 minutes extra the official is on site completing your inspection. This overtime fee is currently fixed at $40 per half hour.

Unless you’re the owner of the mobile home, or a licensed mobile home manufacturer working on one of your products, you need an MHD-licensed plumber and air conditioning company to do any upgrades, installations, or repairs to a new or used trailer. Your brother or a friend cannot do this work for you if they aren’t licensed properly.

If you or a friend do any plumbing work on your manufactured home and it doesn’t meet the inspector’s approval, you’ll pay quite a bit in fees. It’s better to hire a qualified plumber or qualified A/C contractor to do your mobile home installations, upgrades, or repairs. They have the training and skills to perform approved work. And they comply with MHD codes, so you don’t have to worry about an unhappy inspector.

Trailer Crawl Spaces Are Creepy

The supply and drain pipes in the majority of manufactured homes are below the trailer in the crawl space. In standard homes, pipes may be run up through walls. Mobile home fixtures including sinks, toilets, and tubs are supplied via pipes that enter through the flooring.

To do repairs on any supply or drain pipe, you need to crawl under the mobile home (or cut a hole in the floor, which is not always a suitable option). The crawl space under the trailer is not the most fun place to be. You’ll need to drag yourself over gravel or bare dirt, work in very confined spaces, and face bugs and other pests while you’re under the trailer.

There are numerous lines that run under a trailer. You need to know exactly which ones go where and be certain you don’t accidentally cut your gas, cable, or phone lines. You may have to scoot in and out of the crawlspace repeatedly to be sure you’re in the correct spot. If there are any leaks in the system while you work below deck, you’re going to get very wet before it’s all said and done

MHD-licensed plumbers have tools and techniques to easily reach and do work on under-trailer plumbing. They can perform installations and repairs in a fraction of the time it takes a novice homeowner to tackle such tasks. Save yourself the trouble and time, and hire a professional plumber from the start.

Mobile Homes Have Issues

If you’ve never worked on a mobile home before, you should know that mobile home plumbing is not the same as standard home plumbing. Aside from the lack of pipes in walls, the fittings and pipes in mobile homes are often smaller or specially sized for manufactured home applications. Everything from bath faucets to toilet supplies may need specialty replacements.

There are some features of mobile home plumbing that you may not see in standard homes and some features in standard homes that aren’t always included in mobile home systems. Under a kitchen or bathroom sink in a mobile home, you may find an open check vent, or air vent, sticking up from the main sink drain pipe. This check vent seems to be a random thing with no purpose. However, it helps increase air flow into your drains to help push waste and smells out of the lines.

Individual shut-off valves to fixtures are often left out of the plumbing plans in a mobile home. This means that if you have a leak at a sink, you can’t always cut the sink’s water supply but must shut off your main water source to make repairs. These and other quirky issues are well-known to MHD-licensed plumbers, who are happy to install shut-off valves at your fixtures when they make other repairs.

The professionals at Rakeman Plumbing are approved by Nevada’s MHD to make all plumbing repairs on mobile homes in the state. Contact us today to install, replace, or repair any plumbing issue you’re facing in your manufactured housing.